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International Herald Tribune
January 5, 2009
Rami G. Khouri
Many analogies are being made between the ongoing Israeli attack against Hamas in Gaza and the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Here are the most important ones, in my view.
The first is about provenance: Hamas and Hezbollah did not exist before around 1982. They are the ideological step-children of the Likud Party and especially Ariel Sharon, whose embrace of violence, racism and colonization as the primary means of dealing with occupied Arab populations ultimately generated a will to resist. The trio currently carrying on Sharon's legacy - Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni - seem blind to the fact that the more force and brutality Israel uses against Arabs, the greater is the response in the form of more effective resistance movements that have wider public support.
The second analogy is about technical proficiency. Hezbollah and Hamas have both consistently increased their determination and ability to use assorted rockets and missiles to harass and attack Israel. More importantly, they are better able to protect their rocket launchers from Israeli attacks.
The number of Israeli dead in recent years is in the low hundreds, compared to the thousands of Palestinians that Israel has killed. But destruction and dead body counts are not the most useful criteria to use in this analysis. The real measures of what matters politically are the nagging Israeli sense of vulnerability and the Palestinian sense of empowerment, defiance and capacity to fight back.
It is a gruesome but tangible victory for Hamas simply to be able to keep firing 30 or 40 rockets a day at southern Israel, while Israel systematically destroys much of the security and civilian infrastructure in Gaza.
The frustration in Israel is reflected in its bombing attacks on the Islamic University and the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza - symbols of the sort of modernity and democracy that Israel and the United States claim they seek to promote in the Arab world, but which, in practice, they find much easier to bomb. Palestinians and Lebanese pay a very high price for their steadfastness, resistance and "victories." But until someone offers a more cost-effective way of dealing with Israel's violence in this conflict, we are likely to see this cycle of warfare continue for some time.
The TV images of dead children and other civilians in Gaza generate a tremendous will to fight among Palestinians and supporters throughout the Arab world and beyond.
Israelis remain blind to the fact that Arabs respond to brutality the same way they do. A majority of Israelis polled this week supports the continuation of attacks against Gaza, despite the high civilian death toll. Israelis seem to feel that they have the right to respond to attacks against them by using indiscriminate violence against Palestinian civilians - but Palestinians do not have the same right to respond when they are attacked by Israel.
One consequence of this attitude by many Israelis, especially those in government, has been the birth, development and strength of Hamas and Hezbollah, and their ability to fight back with enough proficiency to force Israel to accept a cease-fire.
The third analogy is about the convergence between religion, nationalism, governance and politics. In both Palestine and Lebanon, the secular political systems proved dysfunctional, corrupt and unable to protect the society against Israeli aggression or domestic strife and criminality.
Movements like Hamas and Hezbollah developed in large part to fill the vacuum in efficient governance, security against Israeli attacks and domestic order. They have achieved mixed results, with success in some areas but also an intensification of warfare and destruction in others.
Trying to discredit these movements by accusing them of one transgression - i.e., they use terrorism, attack civilians, carry arms, cozy up to Syria and Iran, espouse an Islamist agenda - will not discredit or destroy them. This is because of the structural manner in which they fulfill multiple roles that respond to the real needs of their citizens and constituents in the realms of governance, local security, national defense and basic service delivery - responsibilities that their secular national governments failed to fulfill.
The combination of these attributes makes it very hard for Israel to "defeat" Hezbollah and Hamas in their current configuration, regardless of how much death and destruction Israel rains on their societies. These two Islamist-nationalist movements reflect a long list of mostly legitimate grievances that must be addressed if peace and security are ever to reign in this region.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of The Daily Star and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.
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